Marketing is indeed an important part of startup life. According to digital strategists Transcend Digital, early-stage startups spend around 10% of their planned annual revenues on marketing. That’s anything between $5,000 and $10,000 monthly. 

To ensure marketing budgets are used wisely, startups really need to find cost-effective ways to stand out amongst the barrage of promotions consumers are exposed to. Research shows the average consumer receives up to 121 promotional email messages per day.

One of the most cost-effective ways of creating messaging that stands out is market research.

Market research is diligently used as a tool in the early stages of startup life to validate a problem, test solutions, and find product/market fit. But what founders sometimes forget is that market research is equally important when it comes to crafting impactful messaging. It’s one of the best tools to identify and understand the language your customers speak so you can create compelling copy that converts.

Great startup products and services flop all the time. Not because they're not needed, but because brands fail to articulate the value of what they have to offer in words that matter to their audience. 

When it comes to your messaging, there are few red flags to look out for which could suggest you’re not (yet) speaking your customers’ language.

• You find yourself overexplaining what you do. This normally means you are not 100% sure how to describe what you offer either.
• Your audience is confused. You get too much polite digital nodding but not enough engagement and conversion.
• You’re out of sync with customer perceptions. Your audience sees you one way. Just not quite the way you want.
• You get lots of interest but no actual sales.

It’s quite common for brands to recognise some of these warning signs. If and when you do, here are a few things to try to get your copy back on track. 

Customer interviews

First, have conversations with your audience. Setting up regular customer interviews with paying or target customers is a powerful way of really listening to your audience. Specifically, take note of the words and phrases they most commonly use. Your customers often have all the information you need. Again and again, founders are wrongly assuming their customers talk about their offer the same way as they do.

Dana Publicover is a marketing expert and has helped hundreds of businesses nail their marketing copy. She told me: “You need to talk to people who buy, who don’t buy, and people you hope will buy. By talking to them, you’re going to learn their language. It’s like suddenly becoming vegan or starting CrossFit, there is a lingo, a language you learn, a vocabulary. You need to figure out what vocabulary your customers use.”

If you are keen to get started with customer interviews, here is a great exercise to start exploring language with your target market.

• Pick three to five people in your target audience
• Invite them to join a call (30 minutes is often enough)
• Ask them to describe to you what you do (if they are already aware of you) or ask them to look at your website/socials/emails and then describe to you what you do and what you have to offer
• Keep your questions neutral. For example: How would you describe this? Or What do you think this means?
• Identify gaps. Explore language. Close gaps
• Repeat on a quarterly or bi-annual basis depending on needs

Social Listening 

Alongside interviewing customers, social listening is another great way to keep tabs on how your ideal customers are talking about their problems, pains, and successes in and around your business category.

Social listening is pretty simple to do and doesn’t involve tracking down customers to speak to. All you need to do is figure out where they hang out online. In essence, social listening is finding, reading, and analysing customer generated content across social media and other online platforms. These days people share wisely (and wildly) on the internet and as businesses we get to read their thoughts and feelings in their own words.

Some of my favourite places to look include the comment sections on relevant, high-engagement social media accounts such as Instagram and TikTok. Facebook groups are another great place to eavesdrop on consumer conversations. Other online platforms such as Reddit and Quora can also be absolute treasure troves of customer thoughts and feelings. 

Search tools

Finally, with over 8.5 billion search queries typed into Google every day, search aggregation tools are another effective way of picking up on customer language. Two of my favourite ones to try are Answer the Public and AlsoAsked. They show the exact type of phrases and questions customers are typing into Google in and around specific keywords.

Results from both platforms are visual, useful and can be downloaded in different formats. While both restrict the number of free searches, you get more than enough chances to find something valuable. 

Remember, understanding customer language is not a one-off exercise. Keep listening and tweaking your marketing accordingly. Put quarterly reminders in your diary to go through this process again and again. Plough your findings into brand guidelines and templates you can share with the rest of your team and always keep track of how effective your messaging is at converting your ideal customers.

In the startup world, if you want people to join in to follow and to buy, don’t let the wrong words be a barrier to success. Speak to people. Listen with curiosity. What’s in a word? Everything. Choose wisely.

This article originally appeared in the May/June issue of Startups Magazine. Click here to subscribe